Methane-poor Turkmenistan fixes leaks

 

TT

 

Published 03.4

 

Methane leaks from oil and gas facilities are often relatively cheap and easy to fix. Archive photo. Photo: David Goldman/AP/TT

Turkmenistan has been singled out as the world's worst country for giant methane leaks from aging oil and gas facilities. Now the country has fixed eight leaks.

- Eight cases are a fantastic first step, but there are also many more sources in Turkmenistan that need to be fixed, says Meghan Demeter, program manager for Mars, the UN's methane warning and response system, to The Guardian.

Mars has sent 192 warnings about methane emissions in Turkmenistan in the past year. Turkmenistan has responded to about a fifth of them.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that retains 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and is currently responsible for 25 percent of global warming. A single super leak – where tons of methane escape per hour from a valve or pipe – warms the Earth more than a million SUVs or an entire coal-fired power plant, according to The Guardian.